all, Sabina was nowise to blame: why should the child be punished?
To-morrow I would give them the slip, and stroll round by her garden
promiscuous-like, at a time when the farmer was safe in the rick-yard.
If nothing came of it, there was no harm done; and if on the
contrary...!

THE BURGLARS

It was much too fine a night to think of going to bed at once, and so,
although the witching hour of nine P.M. had struck, Edward and I were
still leaning out of the open window in our nightshirts, watching the
play of the cedar-branch shadows on the moonlit lawn, and planning
schemes of fresh devilry for the sunshiny morrow. From below, strains of
the jocund piano declared that the Olympians were enjoying themselves
in their listless, impotent way; for the new curate had been bidden to
dinner that night, and was at the moment unclerically proclaiming to all
the world that he feared no foe. His discordant vociferations doubtless
started a train of thought in Edward's mind, for the youth presently
remarked, a propos of nothing that had been said before, "I believe the
new curate's rather gone on Aunt Maria."

I scouted the notion. "Why, she's quite old," I said. (She must have
seen some five-and-twenty summers.)

"Of course she is," replied Edward, scornfully. "It's not her, it's her
money he's after, you bet!"

"Didn't know she had any money," I observed timidly.

"Sure to have," said my brother, with confidence. "Heaps and heaps."

Silence ensued, both our minds being busy with the new situation thus
presented,--mine, in wonderment at this flaw that so often declared
itself in enviable natures of fullest endowment,--in a grown-up man
and a good cricketer, for instance, even as this curate; Edward's
(apparently), in the consideration of how such a state of things,
supposing it existed, could be best turned to his own advantage.

"Bobby Ferris told me," began Edward in due course, "that there was a
fellow spooning his sister once--"

"What's spooning?" I asked meekly.

"Oh, _I_ dunno," said Edward, indifferently. "It's--it's--it's just a
thing they do, you know. And he used to carry notes and messages and
things between 'em, and he got a shilling almost every time."

"What, from each of 'em?" I innocently inquired.

Edward looked at me with scornful pity. "Girls never have any money," he
briefly explained. "But she did his exercises and got him out of rows,
and told stories for him when he needed it--and much